Tabs

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Our gas furnace decided to start spurting scalding hot water all over my garage the other day. And for the past two days, while I waited for three different experts to attempt to determine the root of the problem, I had to turn my heat off. When your house is a frigid 58 degrees, and you aren’t allowed to leave that frigid house because you don’t want to miss the guy who will help to make your house not so frigid, you need distractions.

To keep everyone’s minds off our chattering teeth (and a toddler’s overwhelming desire to play with the oscillating space heater), I designated today Game Day.

Bingo, The Ladybug Game, Hi Ho Cherry-O, Connect 4, Memory, Candy Land. I don’t think I’ve ever played so many board games in such a short period of time (or at least without a bottle of wine playing along with me).

Big C had a blast, but Little C was a little harder to please. Two-year-olds definitely aren’t qualified to play anything that 5-year-olds are interested in. But once I figured out the rotation of distraction method, I was essentially able to keep both kids occupied simultaneously. Once Big C lost interest in one game, we rotated it to Little C (to play by her own rules), while we rotated to the next game in the marathon. Granted, it wasn’t fun for me to clean up those cherries from Hi Ho Cherry-O or the checkers from Connect 4 with one hand while setting up the game pieces for another game with my other hand, but it was a small price to pay to keep Little C from running off with our Candy Land men or eating the Bingo balls.

By the end of the day, I was all gamed out. But Big C wasn’t. So thank you to pbskids.org for getting me out of playing one more game.